


Fictober 2020

by ErrantNight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Birthday, Gen, Illustrated, loth-rats
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:55:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26751688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErrantNight/pseuds/ErrantNight
Summary: A bunch of one shots, one each day of October! I'll add fandoms and characters as I write things because I have no idea what I'll be doing til I start writing. Might add fan art, there's some on chapter one.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	Fictober 2020

Prompt 1: It was so dark he couldn't see his hand in front of his face. 

Ezra held his hand up and put it in front of his nose, so close he can feel his rapid breaths fluttering against his palm. Nope, he couldn’t see anything. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it except maybe because he’d heard someone say ‘it was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face’ on some holocartoon when he was little.

He wasn’t little now, he was eight, and he wasn’t scared of the dark.

It wasn’t like he had someone to hold his hand, he didn’t need anyone to hold his hand.

But maybe, right now, it would have been nice.

He curled up tighter against the wall of the ventilation duct and shivered. It was cold in here, the recycled air was chilled against the heat of the day outside and he’d thought it’d be a great place to sleep. But then he’d got bored, kriffin’ stupid, and wandered deeper in. Curiosity had drawn him further away from the grate he’d unfastened outside the building and into the depths of what at first had been just an occupied apartment complex. He’d been extra quiet going past outtake vents when he heard other people in their homes, living their lives.

He ignored the sounds of children chattering excitedly to their parents about the parade and the fireworks and having the next day off of school. He hated today, he’d wanted to get as far away from the Empire Day festivities as he possibly could. Well, now he was too far away - he’d stopped hearing the fireworks some time ago. He’d put his hands over his ears at first, then swiped angrily at his stupid wet face and crawled and crawled through the vents until he couldn’t hear anything at all.

He’d not noticed how dark it was getting, not with having to stop every little while and use his shirt to clean the dirt from his eyes that was making them leak everywhere. He hadn’t counted the turns either, which was extra stupid. He banged the back of his head against the metal wall, sending a concussive echo that faded out in all three directions - he knew there was a path on either side of him and one directly ahead, but other than that he had no idea.

He thought maybe he’d ended up in the warehouses far behind the apartment buildings, it was the only explanation - but he hadn’t even known all of the vents were connected to one big environmental control system. A fresh blast of cold air came alone with the creaking groan of metal, making Ezra curl tighter into a shivering ball of misery.

He was going to die in here and nobody would ever know. Or care.

His chest burned and his throat tightened as he struggled to not burst into sobs. Underneath the sound of rushing air and pinging durasteel, a softer sound brought Ezra’s head up… Something soft and wet nudged at his elbow and he shouted - 

“Gaahh! Of course, I’m gonna die down here and get eaten by loth-rats!”

The scuttling sounds fanned out in all directions, then a soft chittering heralded a faint yellow shimmer all around him.

Loth-rats, definitely, but they were the little kind and not the huge monsters that fought loth-cats for scraps in the dump and ended up in stew pots when people were especially hungry. They were each about the size of his hand, he could see, and each had spindly legs and hopped around him curiously - everything being softly lit yellow by the tips of bio-luminescent tails and ear tufts. 

“Ha… um…”

There were dozens of them, all sizes, their pink noses wiggling as they bounced closer and sniffed at him.  
He bit his lip, scrubbing at his wet face with hands he only belatedly realized were filthy. 

“You wouldn’t happen to know the way out of here, would you?” he said, cringing at how sad that was. Unexpectedly they all chittered together, converging into a little mass of quivering noses and bobbing lights, then slowly hopped down one tunnel. 

The stopped when he just started at them, one of them hopping closer and squeaking, then bouncing backwards until he started to follow them.

This was weird, but did he have any other options? Either he gave up right here or followed the rats…  
He crawled after them for what felt like the whole night, following them around a dozen corners and knowing that even if he’d have managed to figure out a way back before that was definitely not going to happen. Occasionally groups of rats would break off and disappear through rusted holes and tiny broken vents, then they or other’s like them reappeared and joined the parade drawing him through more and more filthy chutes.  
His hands and knees were burning from crawling so long on the cold metal, but suddenly he had to stop and avoid falling through the open grate above what was definitely a warehouse of some kind. Soft red lights were glowing from inside, but a couple of them were flickering in that ‘almost out of power’ sort of way that Imperial warehouses didn’t usually have. So he had a better chance of sneaking out without being grabbed by stormtroopers for breaking and entering.

“Um, thanks,” he said, feeling incredibly odd - a faint buzzing in the back of his head that made him both happy and tired as the little rodents swarmed him for a moment, then disappearing back the way they’d come.  
He eased down out of the open vent, landing quietly on top of some crates. They were covered in dust, everything around him was, and in the soft light he began fiddling with the hopefully not jammed controls on the side of the one closest. 

His eyes widened and he glanced around - they were Imperial rations, the really good ones with the self heating packs inside of them and not just bland tasteless ration bars. The dates were off, two years out of the date they should have been thrown out, but he’d had a couple before that were supposedly ‘bad’ longer. They were safe, and even tasty most of the time, and it looked like they’d been abandoned. Or probably hidden here and whoever’d taken them never got to pick them back up to sell them. 

Picking through other crates as quickly as he could, finding a medical kit and a survival pack that was already full of things like an emergency solar energy collector and cooking stuff…

He shoved as many of the ration packs as he could fit into his new backpack, nearly falling over backward when he heaved the whole thing onto his back. He knew exactly where he was going now, he’d wanted to go before but this stuff would make everything so much better.

He found his way back outside, finding the streets quiet so far from where the demonstrations had ended probably a couple of hours ago at least. He had an open road to the outskirts and he had a long walk ahead of him - the abandoned communications tower he’d been eyeing for a month. With all these supplies he could actually set himself up somewhere he wouldn’t get bothered or robbed or maybe pushed into joining one of the gangs always promising to take care of him as long as he stole stuff for them instead of keeping it for himself.

As the sun rose over the horizon, Ezra lay flat on the metal floor breathing heavily - he’d made two more agonizingly difficult trips back to the warehouse, dragging back another pack full of food and an inflatable mattress and pillow. He’d get that out when he felt like moving - everything hurt… but that was fine. He could even go back and get more, maybe, or take things from there once in awhile and sell it. The thought of trading some of those rations for even one meiloorun was amazing.

He yawned, rolling over and grabbing a pouch of citrus flavored electrolyte water and sticking the straw in with one eye closed.

“Happy Birthday to me.”

-o0o-

**Author's Note:**

> A/N I discovered there are no canon images of loth-rats so I invented some little glowy jerboas cause I think it’s cute.
> 
> Here's a link to the prompts if you'd like to do them! [Fictober 2020 Prompts](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/errantnight/630132234907680768)


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